


Highway Thoughts

by TempoPrestissimo



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 01:56:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14966624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempoPrestissimo/pseuds/TempoPrestissimo
Summary: Long car rides are great for thinking about things. (Eight very short, first-person thoughts.)





	1. Sakamoto Ryuji

I really do go back and forth between admiring Ryuiji and wanting to strangle him. I never really understood what people meant when they said someone was a ‘too honest for their own good’ but I definitely understand now. He talks completely without thinking about what his words might do. But at the same time, if I killed someone and called him needing help, his first response would be, “Fuck them, man, they deserved it.” and an offer to help with the body. 

That feeling, knowing that someone has my back no matter what, is incomparable. It probably is what stops me from pulling my hair out when he does something stupid.

And maybe he has to be like that. Maybe he has to be so recklessly expressive if he’s going to stay as true as he is.

I wouldn’t change him for the world.


	2. Morgana

I have a problem, sometimes, where I should speak up and I don’t. Usually, it’s a good habit. Let people talk long enough and eventually, they tell you what you need to know. It’s as simple as giving them enough rope to hang themselves with. But when the conflict with Morgana came up… I feel that listening, for once, was the wrong choice. 

Morgana was so obsessed with the idea of becoming human. I wonder if that was our doing. Had we taken him more seriously, would it have been the same kind of problem?

Sometimes we get second chances. I’m wiser now. I won’t make the same mistake.


	3. Takamaki Ann

I wasn’t sure if I would like Ann if only because we were so different. We didn’t seem to have anything in common, and I would have never wanted someone like her to get pulled in to this. But… I’m glad she did. She’s shockingly clever and to-the-point. I’m really glad that she’s friends with Makoto now. Combined, they are a terrifying force. 

I respect her, but more than that… she makes me smile. Like Ruyji, she’s unrepentant and honest. She has a great love for life. When I am tired, or when I doubt myself, she quickly squashes any of those feelings.

She’s kind of like a hurricane of a person.


	4. Kitagawa Yusuke

Yusuke is a pretentious idiot and he makes my life better for being in it. I’ve never had someone so forcefully make me confront and appreciate the world around me. It’s become a habit now, whenever I find my mind wandering, to look at my surroundings and ask How would Yusuke see this? Intentional or not, I’m now acutely aware of how fleeting everything is. Everything changes so quickly. If I don’t see it, if I don’t take the time to acknowledge its existence, who will?

Besides Yusuke, of course, and he’s better at it than I am, anyway.


	5. Niijima Makoto

Makoto would be a better leader than I am. I think that’s a given. If Morgana had found her first, she’d be the one running the show and we might be better off for it. But… I’m glad she isn’t. She’s clever and capable and now that she knows she can help people she is focused on only that and I think, I’m pretty sure, that running the Phantom Thieves would have ruined her life. 

Maybe it’s better that I got picked, in the end, but we still benefited from having her. She’s a whole different level of person, and she makes you want to be that, too.


	6. Sakura Futaba

I never wanted siblings. ‘Adopting’ Futaba was an accident, and the results are, well, I’d probably kill someone for her. No, I would. I absolutely would. I don’t know who I’m kidding, of course I would. And she wouldn’t kill someone for me but she would sure ruin someone’s life with a lot of enthusiasm and really, that’s enough. 

I’m still her ‘key item’, I don’t think that will change. She’ll go and be brilliant and unrepentantly weird and I’ll still be there for her, whenever she needs me. Maybe one day she won’t need me anymore… but I don’t think she’d tell me, even if that was the case.


	7. Okumura Haru

I think I might be in love with Haru. Not… love, maybe. Adoration. That’s probably closer. It’s less that I want to date her and more that I see the way the world looks at her when she talks.

It would be so easy for her to be less than she is. To be only the sunshiney persona with no depth to it, or worse, to use it as a lie while she followed in the path her father laid for her. It would have been all too easy for her to be that person.

But, no. Haru’s strength and sense of justice aren’t as loud as Ryuji’s or Ann’s, but she’s just as unconquerable, and its all wrapped in this tiny, unassuming little package.


	8. Akechi Goro

I always wanted to like Akechi. He just seemed so _tired_ , and if there was one emotion I knew I could sympathize with, it was exhaustion.

 Sometimes in life, you meet someone and it’s like a lightbulb goes off in your head. _Oh_ , you think. _This is important_.

 I still wonder, sometimes, if things could have gone differently. What if we had figured it out earlier and confronted him? But thoughts like that are useless. He was always too far ahead. We got lucky with the casino heist. It was a brilliant idea… but it came too late to make any real difference to _him_.

 Morgana came back because we willed it. Because he was a cognition we made real again.

 With everything that happened… did I just not think about Akechi enough?

 Would it, _could_ it, have changed anything?


End file.
